America, 1820-1890 (2007)

Episodes

There had been reports of horror coming from the battlefield at Manassas. In April 1862, the Senate Committee on the Conduct of War was asked to investigate accusations of Confederate crimes against Union dead and wounded at the First Battle of Manassas. On May 5, 1862, The Chicago Tribune published the Committee's report, including excerpts of testimony and their conclusions. The testimony was...

On Saturday, November 17, 1832 an ad appeared in the Charleston Mercury for a "Young Ladies' French and English Academy" which had just opened in Philadelphia. Such ads for girl's academies were not uncommon in the 1830s, for over the span of the early 1800s there was a growing trend for families to send their daughters to one of these schools if they could afford it. The popularity of these academies...

Courageously "march[ing] under a constantly increasing shower of shot and shell," General John Bell Hood and his fighting Texans battled their war towards a Union embankment and on to glory. The stage was the Battle of Gaines's Mills on June 27th, 1862, and it was up to Hood and his men to lead the charge to Confederate victory. This was the battle, as Hood describes it in his memoir, which launched...

"They were mutilated horribly, stripped naked, their bodies cut open and scalped, even to the beards from their faces," reported a New York Times correspondent from Fort Laramie, in what was then the Dakota Territory. On December 21, 1866, a detachment of 81 soldiers under the command of Captain William Fetterman was lured out of Fort Phil Kearny, ambushed by a coalition of Indians, and completely...

On March 22, 1861 in Philosophian Hall at Furman University, a secretive meeting was called to order. A leather-bound book as tall as a man's forearm with robin's egg blue pages was then opened reverently, and a man's voice read aloud the last meeting's minutes. After he finished, his hand held a pen poised above the first line of a new page, ready to record in flowing script the minutes of the...

On March 9th, 1895, the Times and Registrar published an article detailing a new hypodermic syringe. Its sleek design, metal casing surrounding a sanitary inner glass chamber, was the newest in medical technology. A screw-on needle kept the syringe itself from being dangerous, decreasing the chance of sticks and accidents. Though the metal casing itself could be used many times, proving both...

With a sound "resembling the discharge of a small piece of artillery" and "the rushing sound of steam, and the rattling of glass", the starboard boiler on the steamboat Helen McGregor exploded on February 24, 1830 on the Memphis waterfront. In The Mariner's Chronicle, one gentleman on board described the scene in the boiler room as a "complete wreck - a picture of destruction". He witnessed one man...

On December 5, 1832 Reverend James M. Chiles wrote a letter to fellow South Carolinian Reverend James C. Furman detailing the health of Chiles' family and the surge of religious revival in his area. Chiles began the letter with an apology that it had taken him so long to respond offering the explanation that he had been close to death and his youngest sister had died. Joy and sorrow flowed together...

On December 28, 1871, in Columbia, S.C., Sherod Childers, Evans Murphy, Hezekiah Porter and William Montgomery received their sentencing for the infamous Ku Klux Klan conspiracy in South Carolina. It was here, in Columbia, that the federal court attempted to provide serious solutions to stunt the organization whose actions had become increasingly violent and oppressive. While these actions by the federal...

In 1851, a journalist put into words an ideology that would start a new trend in urban development. He proposed the construction of a huge public park that would "be enjoyed by thousands of all classes, without distinction." The ideals of Romanticism and the Republican view of the importance of nature were at a peak among educated Americans at this time and this commentator proposed a way to manifest...